Soap Making

After market on Saturday - Renae, Yoko, and I made soap! It took us about 5 hours, only because we were not very organized - running off to gather herbs and flowers to add...eating Yoko's miso soup...stopping for pie...building a fire (it was freezing! unbelievable for you hotlanta folks.)

Yoko has made soap many times and was our expert teacher. Safety was key when working with the lye, also known as "caustic soda" - ouch!

The first step was to measure out 3 pounds of water (kind of strange to measure water in pounds), adding the lye slowly to it. Within seconds the water became very hot as the chemical reaction was taking place. While the lye was cooling, we scooped a ton of coconut oil and palm oil into a pot to melt together with 4 pounds of olive oil. The lye needed to cool to around 80 degrees before we could mix it with the oils. In the meantime, Yoko showed Renae and I how to line bread pans and box lids with wax paper...our molds. This was quite the annoying task trying to fold the edges perfectly and not make creases. We used an electric mixer, along with a hand mixer to mix the oils and lye together very thoroughly. We took turns with the hand mixer for about 40 minutes until the liquid became thicker. I believe Yoko added a little grapefruit oil also as a preservative. Once it was ready we quickly divided the mixture up between us and hurried to add our herbs and essential oils of choice. I added tons of dried lavender flowers to one mix, along with some lavender essential oil to make sure it would smell yummy. My second batch I added ground up calendula flowers to the lavender which changed the color and scent a bit. The final step was the most fun...I got to had whole calendula flowers on top as decoration...I liked to prettify. And that was it! A nice cozy way to spend a Saturday evening.